Again, who bashed them? It has been established they are a fine company with excellent customer service. I find it amusing how you know my intent of the post and yet you are the one trying to change this from a discussion on grain crush to being personal. I already said in a previous post I should have kept it generic and not mentioned the company name. Like it or not, this is an on going problem and is why so many of the experienced brewers on this site recommend getting your own mill.

My take-away from this thread is that Northern Brewer makes a lot of mistakes but that they do a great job of fixing them and are really polite to their customers.

I think it's great that they have such loyal customers that are so willing to defend them but I don't think I would order from them after this. Who wants to order there supplies, wait to receive them only to find they are somehow messed up and them wait on the fix? Not me. I think I'll just go to my LHBStore. They are really cool and if they make a mistake it can be fixed the se day. Also, I like to buy local.

This is totally ridiculous! NB is one of the largest online suppliers, they have several LHB stores. If they made A LOT they would not have grown to be the huge success that they are. I have made most of my orders from them since last July. I have had a problem with them just once. It was with hardware. It was taken care of with one email.

To the OP you need to proof read your post with a thought as to how it will sound to someone else. I get that you meant to make a warning that there may be a problem with NB's crush.

It came off as a RANT that NB has lousy grain crush. If you added that you didn't think that it was a common occurrence and that you would be contacting them in the post you would not have gotten the same type of response.

Most likely the passion comes from the multiple positive experineces others have had with this supplier. I have never bought from NB, as I am fortunate enough to have a brick and mortar LHBS nearby. Based on the OVERALL feedback in this thread, I would have no problem buying from NB if the need arose. NB reputation is intact, IMHO.

As a new AG brewer who doesn't own his own mill (yet), I will say that I also appreciated this thread for a few reasons.

1) I appreciated the pictures of what a less than stellar crush looks like. The more I can learn on someone else's dime/time, the better.
2) I also learned that crush can vary between husk-less malts and regular base malts and I may need to (or should) make special requests for gap spacing or double milling for certain types of grains. And for that reason, I appreciate the shared knowledge/experience with a particular supplier.....I now know to take extra precaution when ordering grain from NB to avoid potential brewing delays. Again, learning from someone else's experience.
3) And finally, I appreciated hearing that if I ever have an issue with NB, there's a good chance that they'll rectify the situation. So I just won't plan on ordering grain from them on a Monday for a Saturday brew-day until I've placed enough orders to be comfortable that I won't have to test their customer service.

Sure, perhaps the OP could've waited until he completed his due diligence and given them a chance to remedy the situation before "yelling fire in a crowded theater". But, by that same logic, we probably shouldn't be posting praises about any vendors until we've given them enough opportunities to screw something up.

Personally, I'd like to know if a supplier has a reputation for having to fix mistakes and having to re-ship orders/ingredients so I can take that into account when making my purchases. So why not share any and all experiences, good or bad? I dunno, I guess I'd just like to think that myself, and most others, are smart (and diligent) enough to take a single post for what it's worth and do a search or read up on suppliers before getting out the credit card.

__________________-If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.

Man I can't believe people are getting so hostile that you posted when you received practically uncrushed grain. You were honest about it and didn't bash them at all.

Extreme fanboyism.

Glad to hear NB is sending you new grain - hopefully they don't make this same mistake again in the future. Maybe they just had a rookie not know about huskless milling. Honest mistake, no big deal.

It isn't fanboyism, it's the fact that people feel it is appropriate to rush commentary online without giving the merchant a chance to make things right.

Had the OP not admitted he hadn't waited to hear back from NB before posting, this would be a different story. Things happen with pretty much any online vendor. I've had some troublesome orders in the past and don't make a big deal out of it until they company fails to rectify the problem...

Personally I don't care what the problem is, failure to give a chance to fix it before putting something out on the interwebs forever is pretty pathetic.